This prototype Electric Tram is being tested in China, it runs on white painted lines in the road. Its highly advanced batteries give it amazing serviceability and it carries over 300 people.

Everyday I’m sent examples of new ways of developing electric transport capabilities. From cars to aeroplanes the future is electric and combined with the enormous development of renewable energy we are entering a new fossil fuel free era.

We can dramatically reduce pollution which effects everyone of us going about our daily routine.

We can begin to reverse the worst forecasts of climate change and together make our Planet once again safe for the generations to come.

Join us in spreading the word that the UK should be taking a lead in developing renewable energy and of course majoring on moving from petrol/diesel powered transport to electric or eventually even hydrogen.

None of our political parties are focussing on renewable energy or climate change the most important issues of our times. Hold your potential MP’s locally to account and make commitments of support on both subjects.

Our commitment is clear, to the Planet, to landscape, to people and of course to the Natural World.

Tell us your own stories about installing solar, buying an electric car anything that will give confidence to other people thinking of making changes.

Forward our website details to all your friends, relatives and colleagues. Lets shout about this new energy and really get the show on the road here in the UK.

I received the following report from Good Energy this weekend and it appears that the final planning decisions will be made concerning Mapperton Farm’s Solar project in the near future.

Its been a long haul but with a final push this project is going to happen.

So if you feel strongly about the need for more renewable energy projects please show your support as per the details below.

Thankyou

vince adams

Dear Vince,

As someone who kindly helped rally local support for the project in the past, I am writing to ask for your help one more time in securing planning permission for our proposed solar farm at Mapperton near Sturminster Marshall.

Good Energy’s planning application for a proposed 24.2MW solar project at Mapperton Farm is being reconsidered by the local authority after a previous approval was overturned following a legal challenge.

Councillors on East Dorset District Council’s planning committee are due to consider this proposal for a second time at a meeting on 17th January 2017. The application is unchanged from that approved in June 2015 but, in reaching their decision, councillors will take into account any new submissions from members of the public. So we’re asking everyone who backed the previous application to confirm their support by writing to the planning officer one more time.

Please feel free simply to repeat the comments you made on the previous application. If you don’t have these to hand, some key facts about the project are shown at the bottom of this email.

The easiest way to show support is by letter or email directly to the local planning officer, James Brightman, using the details below. Please make sure you quote planning application number 3/13/0681/FUL and submit your comment by the deadline of 19th December 2016.

Key points to consider in your submission:
· Once built at the proposed capacity of 24.2MW, the solar farm would generate renewable electricity energy to power around 6,000 average homes, equivalent to around 70% of the new homes planned for Christchurch and East Dorset over the Local Plan period;

· The solar farm would deliver investment in local community initiatives worth at least £35,000 per year for the lifetime of the project, together with funding for rooftop solar PV systems for a local primary school and village hall;

· The solar farm would protect the land for current and future agricultural use, providing opportunities for sheep grazing along the avenues of solar panels, a practice endorsed by the National Farmers’ Union;

· The proposals include wildlife habitat enhancements such as wildflower meadows throughout the site, hedgerow improvements, planting around field margins and installation of birds and bat boxes in a nearby woodland.

· When last considered by the planning committee in June 2015, the application attracted considerable public support, with over 80 letters being submitted from the local community and the wider Dorset area in favour of the project.

If you need any further information, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

We have an amazing opportunity to say No to Nuclear and Hinkley Point B and focus on a future that embraces renewable energy and builds a sustainable future for us all.

Please read on:

LEADING ARTICLE
july 29 2016, 12:01am, the times
No Point in Hinkley
Alternatives to the large-scale nuclear power station planned for Somerset are now so numerous that the government should cut its losses and start again

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Hours after the French energy giant EDF gave final approval for its investment in the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station last night, the government put the project under review. It was right to do so. The EDF decision is the wrong one for British consumers, Britain’s energy infrastructure and for the company itself. As part of a sensible overhaul of this country’s energy strategy for the next half-century, taking into account fast-changing renewable technologies that could render fossil fuels obsolete within a generation, Hinkley Point needs to be scrapped.
The twin reactors planned for the Somerset site would constitute the biggest and most expensive nuclear power station in the world. Their combined capacity would power five million homes and help to make up a shortfall that the National Grid already has to remedy by paying inflated prices to existing power producers. But EDF’s design is unproven and unaffordable. The project as a whole is too dependent on Chinese investment. Even EDF is not wholly behind it. Last year its chief financial officer resigned rather than support it. Yesterday a board member quit for the same reason.

Hinkley Point C was supposed to produce electricity from next year. The earliest date now envisaged is 2025. If that were plausible the project might still be worth considering. In reality two plants of the same design now under construction in Finland and France are years behind schedule and billions over budget after a series of technical problems. Two more in China have been built faster and more cheaply but have yet to enter service.

EDF has modified the design for France’s own modernisation plans. It is absurd to persist with the discredited version at Hinkley Point, especially when there are so many alternatives.

The US, Japan and Britain’s own Rolls-Royce produce smaller nuclear reactors that could fit more flexibly and much less expensively into our future energy mix. Gas-powered stations can be built in as few as two years once planning requirements have been met, and are the cleanest, most efficient bridge to a low-carbon supply as Britain’s last coal-powered plants are phased out.

Most auspiciously, recent advances in artificial photosynthesis offer the prospect of a solar power revolution that is likely to pull renewables from the fringe to the centre of the energy industry within the lifetime of any nuclear plant under construction today. Last month a team from Harvard announced a breakthrough towards “artificial leaves” that can produce liquid fuel from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide — as plants do, but with up to ten times the efficiency. A second project, at the University of Illinois, has achieved the same trick with low-cost catalysts built into solar panels producing burnable gas rather than electricity. The process solves the energy storage problem that conventional solar power can only address with batteries.

Artificial photosynthesis has long been seen as a holy grail of energy science because its output is carbon-neutral and its input, the sun, is limitless. Its commercialisation will take time, but that of traditional solar panels is far advanced. Falling in price by an average of 10 per cent a year, they are expected to produce a fifth of the planet’s power within a decade.

Energy planners must be nimble enough to embrace these new technologies. To proceed with Hinkley Point C instead is to be held hostage to a design that is outdated before it is built and will never be commercially viable. The strike price agreed by Britain for EDF is twice the current wholesale price for electricity. The evidence suggests that Britain and France are pressing ahead with Hinkley Point C to save the blushes of successive governments that put their faith in it without paying enough attention to its many flaws. Shame on them.

The latest reports from the USA highlights that bats are being killed by wind turbines is great numbers. However with small adjustments to the revolution speed we can hugely reduce the number of deaths and cause very little reduction in energy output.

The last report I saw from the UK was by RSPB and indicated that WT’s did not cause anything but minor mortality to bats.

I don’t know which is right or wrong and how much the technology is different say from the States to European models. But its clear we do need to look out for our little friends and rather like Bees understand and rejoice in the work they do for us in reducing insect populations and their effects on crops.

Articles stating that electric cars are not any cleaner than fossil fuel powered cars appear frequently on the internet. Most recently there have been articles stating that mining Lithium is worse for the planet than extracting oil. This article refutes that claim and makes it clear that electric cars are the better choice. Yes, they are more expensive right now but in the very near future this won’t be the case. And when comparing prices we should also factor in the cost of maintaining all those thousands of moving parts in an internal combustion engine powered car. The world will be a cleaner place in a decade when electric vehicles have replaced ICE age vehicles.

‘Tesla Solar’ Wants to Be the Apple Store for Electricity

Tesla Motors Inc.’s bid to buy the biggest U.S. rooftop solar installer has little to do with selling cars. Rather, it’s about solving two of the biggest problems standing in the way of the next solar boom. And perhaps a good deal more.

That’s undoubtedly true. But in the dozens of analyst notes and news stories that picked apart the deal, there’s been little attention paid to what we’ll call “Tesla Solar” and how it could transform the power sector. It’s actually a really big idea.

Solar Problem No. 1: It’s too complicatedConsider the average homeowner who might be vaguely interested in adding rooftop solar. Where does the process start?

Adding solar requires customers to sort through competing technologies and complex financing schemes with no household names to turn to. And then there’s the aesthetic impediment: Solar panels alter the look and value of one’s most important personal asset—the home. It’s a big leap of faith, even in regions where adding solar is an economic no-

This problem has dogged solar companies for years. Vivint Inc. has legions of door-to-door salesmen, while others have deployed mailers, robocalls, sports sponsorships, and internet search ads. None of it resonates all that much.

Musk, who turned 45 on Tuesday, wants to change this daunting transaction in the same way the Apple Store changed the way we buy consumer electronics. Fifteen years ago, Apple Computer Inc. (as it was known then) faced problems similar to those hobbling solar today. Buying a computer was a big investment: They were complicated, the benefits uncertain, and the choices undifferentiated. Sound familiar?

With the opening of the first Apple Stores, electronics shopping turned from exasperating to joyful. Consumers got to touch and play with the products and ask questions from no-pressure salespeople. Early critics said the stores had too few products and would never make money, but before long the stores themselves became a destination.

Tesla showrooms are cast from the same mold. At the new Tesla outpost in Brooklyn’s Red Hook neighborhood, customers sip free espresso and chat about cars. People go there to learn about electric vehicles often for the first time, and much of the experience is focused on education. Central to all of the showrooms is a stripped-down aluminum Tesla chassis, so customers can get a feel for how the battery and electric motors work. You can even take a test drive with the kids in a tricked-out $130,000 Model X SUV, and no one will ever ask if you want to buy a car, let alone haggle over prices and options if you do.

For solar companies, one of the biggest costs is making that initial connection. For every dollar SolarCity spends on marketing, it installs only an additional half-watt of solar power, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF). To put that in perspective, a typical rooftop solar system in the U.S. is rated at more than 5,000 watts.

This is the biggest reason rooftop solar costs almost twice as much at SolarCity ($3.20 per watt) as similar systems in Western Europe or Australia ($1.70 per watt), according to BNEF. Most people in the U.S. just ignore the expensive marketing anyway: A BNEF survey found that 40 percent of buyers were referred by a friend or family, and 28 percent instigated the purchase themselves.

Other retail companies have experimented with solar partnerships—including Home Depot Inc. and Ikea—but the strategy never really took off for these retail megastores. The solar industry is a product in need of an Apple Store, and Tesla happens to have hundreds of showrooms with very few products to sell. Critics of the SolarCity deal brushed aside the so-called synergy of selling cars and solar panels in the same location, but that may miss the point. Is a customer likely to walk in and buy both at the same time? No more likely than an Apple Store customer will buy an iPhone and a desktop Mac simultaneously.

Instead, what ties the cars-plus-solar Tesla store together is an implicit guarantee of good customer service and sophisticated technology that’s easy to use. That’s branding that can never quite come together so long as Tesla and SolarCity remain separate companies. But together, it just might expand the entire market for solar. A Tesla showroom finally answers that question asked by millions of homeowners: Where do I start?

Solar Problem No. 2: The sun goes downHere’s where things get interesting. Tesla isn’t just a car company looking to buy a solar company. It’s also a battery company that wants to link its two biggest markets: energy supply (solar) with energy demand (electric cars). Cheap and efficient batteries are what make Tesla cars possible, and they have the potential to change the economics of solar, too.

The solar-plus-battery bundle hasn’t really caught on yet. SolarCity’s total bundled sales thus far number in just the hundreds. But that’s because the batteries are still too expensive, and because a government policy known as net metering makes it more profitable to sell solar power back to the grid. Both of these obstacles are about to be flattened. Musk is betting that, in the next five years, the price of solar bundled with batteries will cost less than electricity from the power company.

A Tesla Powerwall battery currently costs about $3,000 for a 6.4-kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery, not including the considerable costs of the power inverter and installation. That’s a lot of money for a little bit of electricity. But Tesla plans to announce the first production of battery cells from its massive “Gigafactory” in Nevada later this summer: When fully up and running, it will produce more battery capacity than the entire global market for lithium ion batteries made last year. The scale is crucial for the rollout of Tesla’s mass-market Model 3 electric car, due in 2017.

By 2020, Tesla is aiming to bring the cost of battery packs down to about $100 per kWh—from an industry average of $1,000 in 2010 —according to RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak. At that price, a Tesla Powerwall battery could cost as little as $640 to make. With an integrated Tesla Solar company, the additional costs of bundling a battery with a $25,000 rooftop solar system would be minimal. At that point, it almost makes sense for Tesla to install batteries as standard with every new solar project.

Net metering rules, which require electric utilities to buy back rooftop solar from customers at retail rates, are the biggest U.S. subsidy for solar power. But as solar power spreads, the policy will begin to destabilize grid economics. Several states have reversed their rules already, most notably Nevada, where the abruptness of the turnabout left customers in the lurch with overbuilt solar systems and no way to recoup costs. Higher-capacity battery storage will eventually allow solar customers to profit from their solar systems with or without net metering. It’s investment security for the homeowner.

A group of solar firms and utilities are pushing to keep net metering rules in place until at least 2020, according to Peter Rive, SolarCity’s chief technology officer. After that, the company plans to begin including batteries with most of its solar systems, Rive told investors on a May 9 call.

Next Up: Tesla EnergyEverything described thus far is the beginning, not the end, of the possible advantages of “Tesla Solar.” What comes next is more speculative, but perhaps more profitable. Basically, there are regulatory changes that are coming to U.S. utility markets that could allow Tesla to dip into one of the most lucrative businesses in the power sector. Tesla could become a sort of power company itself.

“Musk’s intentions are larger than simply adding a third product category,” said BNEF analyst Hugh Bromley. “The future of Telsa Energy could be in energy services.”

The idea is that Tesla could create its own electricity network, aggregating bits of power from thousands of batteries and rooftop solar systems it installs for customers, and sell that energy back to the grid when demand is greatest. This could be used to provide the grid with extra generating capacity during hours of peak demand. But an even brighter market for a network of lithium ion batteries may be to smooth out the tiny surges and shortfalls of the electricity supply that occur throughout the course of any given day.

“This is the most popular service for stationary storage, as it pays so well,” said BNEF analyst Julia Atwood. “And it pays so well because the provider has to respond incredibly quickly and accurately, which is something batteries do very well.”If Tesla produces the cheapest lithium ion batteries available, and it begins to offer them standard with every rooftop solar system that Tesla Solar sells, it could suddenly find itself in control of a very large supply of flexible battery storage. The proceeds could be shared with customers directly or used to subsidize the upfront cost of rooftop solar installation.

This “is the dream,” said Yayoi Sekine, a BNEF analyst. “But there are so many hurdles to get there.”

Aggregating battery and solar capacity into a virtual power plant isn’t a particularly new idea, and it’s one that companies like SolarCity and Enphase Energy Inc. have flirted with in the past. It just hasn’t yet had the scale or the regulatory freedom that the business requires. But California, New York, and Texas are all working on plans that would allow this very scenario to play out.

Why now, and why SolarCity? Without a merger, Tesla could continue selling batteries to various solar installers, including SolarCity, but its would always compete in a commodity market for the cheapest battery. The solar project itself would be branded SolarCity (or Vivint or Sunrun), instead of using the Tesla name, and it wouldn’t be Tesla that aggregates and profits the most from its batteries.

Tesla and SolarCity also have complementary product announcements coming up that make sense for the timing of a deal. Tesla is about to cut the ribbon on the world’s biggest battery factory and unveil the next version of its Powerwall battery pack. SolarCity is getting ready to reveal a new line of high-efficiency panels that it developed from its acquisition of California startup Silevo Inc. in 2014. Musk said he wants to put his mark on those panels, which will be produced in the largest U.S. solar panel plant, which is still under construction.

Like Tesla’s cars, SolarCity’s new panels will be made in the U.S. and sold by the company’s thousands of in-house installers. Here are some of the plant’s particulars:

SolarCity’s Panel Gigafactory Cost: $750 million Location: Buffalo, New York Manufacturing capacity: 10,000 panels a day Power: 1 gigawatt of panels a year Panels: Industry-leading efficiency; Musk promises new aesthetics that add value to the home Start date: 2017The acquisition really couldn’t have happened with another solar producer. SolarCity has the right scale of operations and the American-made panel factory. It’s also hopelessly tangled up with Tesla already. There’s only one member of SolarCity’s board who doesn’t have direct ties to Tesla, and two-thirds of Tesla’s shareholders already own shares of SolarCity.

While the timing does complicate Tesla’s unprecedented ramp-up of its Model 3 electric car production, the competition for electric and autonomous cars is only going to get more fierce. Companies including Apple, Volkswagen AG, General Motors Co., and Daimler AG have all committed to electric vehicle programs to challenge Tesla. Musk’s ambition creep is all his company has ever known, and is probably all it will ever know if it’s going to succeed against the biggest technology and automobile companies in the world.

Is SolarCity a major distraction for Tesla? Probably. Does it add existential risk to both of these long, cash-torching bets? Most likely. Are the conflicts of interest messy? Definitely. But could the deal also result in the world’s first clean-energy juggernaut, a company that does for solar power, batteries, and electric cars what Apple did for computers, phones, and software apps? It’s worth considering.

The Merging Worlds of
Technology and Cars
By Alex Webb and Chloe Whiteaker
June 28, 2016
The line between the technology and automotive industries is blurring. The rise of rideshare companies such as Uber and Lyft means that transportation is being tied ever more closely to your cell phone, while autonomous driving technology is turning your car into a computer. But these developments are expensive: Carmakers’ R&D budgets jumped 61 percent, to $137 billion from 2010 to 2014.

Fiat Chrysler Chief Executive Officer Sergio Marchionne thinks it makes no sense for carmakers to spend billions of dollars developing competing, yet largely identical systems. To share some of the risk—and the cost—the incumbent automotive giants and their would-be disruptors are teaming up in an ever-growing, ever more complex series of alliances.

So Fiat Chrysler, for instance, has paired up with Google to develop 100 self-driving minivans, and is in discussions with Uber about a similar venture. Google has, in turn, invested in Uber, as have Toyota, Microsoft and Tata, owner of Jaguar Land Rover. Bill Ford, chairman of the eponymous carmaker, has meanwhile invested in Lyft, as has General Motors, and Lyft has partnered with China’s Didi, itself the subject of a $1 billion investment from Apple.

Investment
Partnership
Failed talks
Personnel move
Google
GM invested
$500 million in
Lyft and bought
Cruise Automation
for $1 billion.
Fiat
Chrysler
Sidecar
Uber hired Google’s VP of engineering.
GM
Cruise
Automation
Toyota
Uber
Lyft
Ford
Tata
Owner of
Jaguar
Land Rover
Uber hired Ford’s head of electronic systems
engineering to become VP of global vehicle programs.
Didi
Microsoft
Apple invested
$1 billion in Chinese ride-hailing company, Didi, which partners with Lyft.
Apple
Scoop
DriveNow is a joint venture between BMW and Sixt Rent a Car.
Car2Go
Daimler founded Car2Go and acquired MyTaxi and RideScout.
RideScout
DriveNow
Daimler
BMW
Nokia
HERE
MyTaxi
Blacklane
Baidu
VW, BMW and Daimler partnered to buy Nokia’s HERE maps.
Daimler invested in Blacklane, an app for booking chauffeurs.
VW hired the head of Apple’s car project, who previously worked at Daimler.
VW
VW invested
$300 million in
taxi-hailing
company, Gett.
VW owns a stake in the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI).
Gett
DFKI
The prize is lucrative, and the carmakers want to ensure that software players don’t win the lion’s share of it. McKinsey estimates that rideshare and onboard-data services could generate an additional $1.5 trillion of annual automotive revenue by 2030, adding to the $5.2 trillion from traditional car sales and services. And it’s attractive for consumers too: It costs an average of $8,558 per year to own a car in the U.S., but each vehicle is used just 4 percent of the time. Ridesharing in an autonomous vehicle could ensure that cars are always in use.

Everyone is welcome to help us collectively save 50,000 kgs of our personal carbon emissions by the weekend of 25th June 2016 for the Winton Carnival Parade and ongoing. This is like filling the Bournemouth Balloon five times over!

It would be great if Bournemouth could lead the behavioural shift needed in dealing with our changing climate. Cleaner vehicles and renewable energy, in addition to our conscious personal choices will help preserve our beautiful town, country and world!

Count On Me is a local community campaign and more details can be found on our website www.countonme.today (with Twitter and Facebook links). We are inviting the people of Bournemouth to choose one or more sustainable activities like riding a bike, taking public transport, or growing your own fruit and vegetables. Any activity where you reduce your carbon emissions is helpful. Please tell us about it #CountOnMe to be counted!

We will be having some fun and parading in Winton Carnival with our live human counter, and you can come and chat to us after the parade on the Winton Recreation ground and find out about the simple ways we can all make a difference.

Bath & West Community Energy
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Our latest community share and bond offers are now open for investment. We are offering you the chance to invest in shares in BWCE and/or a two year fixed interest bond.

You can download the Bond Offer Document here and the Share Offer Document here. You will be downloading large files so they may take a little time.

We will be holding a series of launch events for this offer – follow the link for more details.

The next events:

There are very limited places available for a chance to meet Directors of the project informally in Bath: Informal meeting (14 June) and Informal meeting (20 June). Both dates start at 7:30.

BOND – The bond is for 2 years with a fixed interest rate of 5.5% a year for members of BWCE and South Somerset Community Energy Society (5% for non-members).

SHARES – We are also offering you the chance to become a member of BWCE by buying shares. The target rate of return on investment in BWCE is 7%. We have paid our our members a 7% a year for the last 4 years.

The money raised will go towards allowing us to take into community ownership a solar array sited a few miles from Crewkerne in Somerset. The array will be capable of generating 5MW of clean energy. The total projected cost of purchasing the Crewkerne solar array will be £5.96 million. The bond and share offer combined will be for £2.63 million with the balance coming from a loan from a commercial lender for £3.33 million.

Advantages to early investors

As the project is fully underwritten we will issue shares and bonds to investors whose applications we have received by 7 June 2016. You start earning interest from the date shares or bonds are issued, within a week of this date. This will give early investors the chance to start earning interest earlier. For information on early investment please see full details in the Offer Document. The full offer will finally close on 12 July 2016 and interest will accrue for all those investing between 7 June and 12 July within a week of the final close date.

And here are 9 good reasons to invest in next offer

How your interest is calculated for the Bond offer

Interest is calculated from the date your bond is issued. There will be 2 issue dates, one for applications received before 7 June, the other at the end of the offer on 12 July. The bond is a 2 year investment with the 5.0/5.5 % interest a year with interest paid annually for 2 years and the capital, or amount invested, repaid at the end of the second year. If you decide to redeem your bond after 2 years you will be repaid your capital and interest earned during the period. You may also have the option to renew your bond for a further period.

How to apply

Before you apply it is important you have read and understood the Offer Document which can be downloaded from this page above. Then, should you decide to continue, go to the Ethex website and apply electronically or complete a paper application which can be found at the end of the Offer Document.

Risk Warning

Investment decisions must only be made on the basis of the offer document and not on information provided in this summary. Your original investment capital may be at risk and any return on your investment depends on the success of BWCE’s business as a whole. You should read the offer document in full, including the risk factors set out in the offer document, and the terms and conditions regarding this offer at Ethex before investing. You should consider taking appropriate financial and other advice before making any investment decision.

South Somerset Community Energy Society

BWCE is working with South Somerset Community Energy Society to help promote the share and bond offers and develop the opportunity for them to buy into the project after year 2. Shareholder members of South Somerset Community Energy Society will also receive the 0.5% bonus.

Anti-fracking protest outside Dorset County Hall this Saturday – all welcome to help protect the UK from fracking. A pivotal decision is imminent which could mean that councils are overruled by the secretary of state – Greg Clark – when it comes to fracking. Stand up for your county – come and join us!

This report identifies how immigration trends will develop during the coming years and why the recent problems with Syrian refugees are just the tip of a huge movement of people unless we tackle Climate Change urgently.

It highlights the need for working closely together with our European partners to develop strategies that really do begin to address the key problem and how climate change will change the whole face of where people live and work.

80 days at 114 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit is probably too many for most people to endure and that is a likely scenario for summers in parts of the Middle East and North Africa thirty to fifty years from now. That means 500 million people or more will need to move. Where they will go is an interesting question.

“More than 500 million people live in the Middle East and North Africa — a region which is very hot in summer and where climate change is already evident. The number of extremely hot days has doubled since 1970. “In future, the climate in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa could change in such a manner that the very existence of its inhabitants is in jeopardy,” says Jos Lelieveld, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and Professor at the Cyprus Institute.

Lelieveld and his colleagues have investigated how temperatures will develop in the Middle East and North Africa over the course of the 21st century. The result is deeply alarming: Even if Earth’s temperature were to increase on average only by two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times, the temperature in summer in these regions will increase more than twofold. By mid-century, during the warmest periods, temperatures will not fall below 30 degrees at night, and during daytime they could rise to 46 degrees Celsius (approximately 114 degrees Fahrenheit). By the end of the century, midday temperatures on hot days could even climb to 50 degrees Celsius (approximately 122 degrees Fahrenheit). Another finding: Heat waves could occur ten times more often than they do now.

By mid-century, 80 instead of 16 extremely hot days

In addition, the duration of heat waves in North Africa and the Middle East will prolong dramatically. Between 1986 and 2005, it was very hot for an average period of about 16 days, by mid-century it will be unusually hot for 80 days per year. At the end of the century, up to 118 days could be unusually hot, even if greenhouse gas emissions decline again after 2040. “If humankind continues to release carbon dioxide as it does now, people living in the Middle East and North Africa will have to expect about 200 unusually hot days, according to the model projections,” says Panos Hadjinicolaou, Associate Professor at the Cyprus Institute and climate change expert.

Atmospheric researcher Jos Lelieveld is convinced that climate change will have a major impact on the environment and the health of people in these regions. “Climate change will significantly worsen the living conditions in the Middle East and in North Africa. Prolonged heat waves and desert dust storms can render some regions uninhabitable, which will surely contribute to the pressure to migrate,” says Jos Lelieveld.

The research team recently also published findings on the increase of fine particulate air pollution in the Middle East. It was found that desert dust in the atmosphere over Saudi Arabia, Iraq and in Syria has increased by up to 70 percent since the beginning of this century. This is mainly attributable to an increase of sand storms as a result of prolonged droughts. It is expected that climate change will contribute to further increases, which will worsen environmental conditions in the area.

In the now published study, Lelieveld and his colleagues first compared climate data from 1986 to 2005 with predictions from 26 climate models over the same time period. It was shown that the measurement data and model predictions corresponded extremely well, which is why the scientists used these models to project climate conditions for the period from 2046 to 2065 and the period from 2081 to 2100.

Largest temperature increase in already hot summers

The researchers based their calculations on two future scenarios: The first scenario, called RCP4.5, assumes that the global emissions of greenhouse gases will start decreasing by 2040 and that the Earth will be subjected to warming by 4.5 Watt per square meter by the end of the century. The RCP4.5 scenario roughly corresponds to the target set at the most recent UN climate summit, which means that global warming should be limited to less than two degrees Celsius.

The second scenario (RCP8.5) is based on the assumption that greenhouse gases will continue to increase without further limitations. It is therefore called the “business-as-usual scenario.” According to this scenario, the mean surface temperature of the Earth will increase by more than four degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial times.

In both scenarios, the strongest rise in temperature in the Middle East and North Africa is expected during summer, when it is already very hot, and not during winter, which is more common in other parts of the globe. This is primarily attributed to a desert warming amplification in regions such as the Sahara. Deserts do not buffer heat well, which means that the hot and dry surface cannot cool by the evaporation of ground water. Since the surface energy balance is controlled by heat radiation, the greenhouse effect by gases such as carbon dioxide and water vapor will increase disproportionately.

Regardless of which climate change scenario will become reality: both Lelieveld and Hadjinicolaou agree that climate change can result in a significant deterioration of living conditions for people living in North Africa and the Middle East, and consequently, sooner or later, many people may have to leave the region”

Story Source:

The above post is reprinted from materials provided by Max-Planck-Gesellschaft. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

Keith Wheaton Green speaks with such personal understanding and eloquence regarding our continued Denial of the most obvious. Is it really just total selfishness by a few who hold back everyone of us and generations to come after us ??

Someone in denial obviously can’t see the truth even when the evidence is all around them. I believe I have only been in denial once in my lifetime to date – when a loved one was dying but I refused to believe it even though everyone around me understood the truth. Obviously, denial has no impact on the inevitable. And so it is with climate change. It can be difficult to accept the truth when it affects cosy lives or world views. Change, or the perception that things will change can be uncomfortable.

I saw this discomfort last week when – yet again – I attended a planning determination for a wind farm in Dorset, this time on the outskirts of Dorchester. The proposed six large (giant?) turbines would produce the annual equivalent of Dorchester’s electrical consumption. That British paranoia with wind was on show yet again. Fifty three of us speakers (for and against) were each given a firm maximum of three minutes. Everything and everyone was polite and professional. The surprise for me was the fact there appeared to be more speakers in support than against the turbines. I haven’t seen this before. Again and again, speakers were passionate and eloquent. People of all ages – even several living in sight of the turbines – expressed a desire to see beautiful turbines. Comments included “turbine installation is reversible, climate change is not, our selfishness is leaving a poisonous legacy to our children, this is the last turbine application in Dorset and our last opportunity to do the right thing, landscape impact of the turbines is dwarfed by the new residential developments of Poundbury and Charlton Down.”

I think the floods of the last three years, the fact that the 15 hottest years on record were during the last 16 years and the uncharacteristically warm, daffodil blooming December 2015 has led to the penny having dropped. Dorchester seems to have a surprising wealth of well-informed people.

However, the planning establishment are wedded to the concept of “landscape harm” and their professional (?!) opinion was that this outweighed the benefit of renewable energy generation. The case officer spent most of his presentation time explaining that harm, with only a passing mention of the schemes benefits. I would say he was in denial of the benefits and the degree of public support. He was not alone. One speaker erroneously stated that there had been no global warming since 2000 and that wind turbine saved no carbon emissions because of the back-up generation required. There were many other statements made that were simply not true. Denial of reality to keep themselves in the cosy zone of their imagined reality.

Councillors had evidently already made up their minds and voted 6 to 3 to reject the application with little discussion. There is no prospect of an appeal to our wind turbine hating government.

Our government is also evidently in denial. Despite David Cameron speaking with apparent passion in support of the firm targets to reduce carbon emissions in Paris, and his statement that Britain was “already leading the way in work to cut emissions,” the current trajectory to reduce UK emissions is dire. Thanks to previous DECC ministers, Eds Milliband and Davey, we did indeed show leadership up until election of our current government. The introduction of the feed in tariff in 2009 and the renewable heat incentive in 2011 led to impressive expansion in renewables. Wind now regularly supplies around 14% of electrical demand (and is not as intermittent as you might think) and photovoltaics show up as a significant reduction of midday demand. (If you don’t believe me, have a look at the excellent gridwatch.templar website where you will find up to the minute and historical easy to understand data.) However, our current government cannot claim responsibility.

Here is a list of what they have done to halt our progress;

Closed the Renewables Obligations 12 months early

Closed the ‘Contracts for Difference’ (CfDs) to onshore wind (which aimed to support new investment in all forms of low-carbon generation and to offer price stabilization.)

Removed Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) pre-accreditation and implemented a wholesale review of FiT with expectation that it could be scrapped entirely.

Changed planning laws for Renewable Energy, making the rules significantly different from shale gas

Vince Adams comments:
"David Saunders long term guru of renewable energy comments on Keith’s article
“Nice article, lovely to see your passion, and worrying of course to know it’s against the stream of government thinking. I attended a public economics lecture at Bristol University last night, on ’the one thing that would change everything’. Beautifully and clearly arguing that if polluters pay the real costs of pollution, rather than externalise them, it would put everything right – meaning climate change. He dismissed 4 or 5 other approaches including a magic techno fix, and said he’d expect to get questions on the alternatives, which gave me the chance to ask one…
And I was fresh from Regen SW’s much-smaller-than-last-year-because-of-the-cuts Smart Energy day in Exeter. I’d been practicing my future-of-energy-in-two-diagrams on various of the attendees and exhibitors, while picking up ideas for the shared renewable energy systems that we want to be planning for our bale-build-community-led-hopefully-very-affordable-cohousing projects.
So I framed the question by saying that I’m actually rather skeptical (based on long experience, plus observation of the Thatcher and Cameron governments) about us being able to persuade the government to legislate to tell us to do the right thing, even post-Paris, and especially in light of recent moves – like the elimination of the petroleum production tax in the budget which is hardly aimed at reducing emissions. So can I ask a question about a technology solution?
Given permission, I pointed out my thesis that solar was following a Moore’s law curve (and at Exeter yesterday, people were agreeing, and no longer putting up the ‘but the energy companies will fight it all the way’ argument, if only because they already have been fighting it all the way, and what we’ve achieved is in spite of that opposition). And it is significant – solar has grown by a factor of ten three times in the last 21 years, in roughly eight, then seven, and then six years respectively. Halving its cost each time, to the point where – in 2014 – it supplied one percent of world electricity, and is lowering grid prices for energy, with or without subsidies.
Given this, I said that doing all you can to reduce pollution, or charge people for making it, is a fine ambition. But what if you replace pollution with something that ACTUALLY COSTS LESS and does not pollute? And what if that replacement, whether it’s a techno fix or not, and whatever timescales they may have been talking about in Paris around 2030, 2040 or 2050, is on target to produce ten percent of our electrical energy in 6 years or less, and then
one hundred percent in a few years more? Because it will have shut down a whole bunch of the polluting energy sources, and replaced our current electricity supply with something far cheaper? Wouldn’t that be alright?
He said “I have just two words for you – ‘I agree.’ “. And then slipped into a kind of precautionary ‘do both’ reply, with which I have no problem whatsoever – though as you are pointing out Keith, the likelihood of our present government legislating to promote the right things seems both microscopic, and receding. He was helpful enough to mention the issue of storage being something we’d have to work on for solar, giving me the opportunity come back and say something about that. Fortunately I had already discussed the issue of storage in the gas grid earlier in the day with a Wales and West Energy guy. Rather than shutting down the gas grid to stop methane emissions – which they recognise has to happen some time – they are already thinking about switching it to hydrogen instead of methane, made from hydrolysis using excess summer solar energy. In Germany, the gas grid has three months worth of national energy demand in storage capacity – so it is already a massive, low cost storage solution.
I summarised and shared this information at the lecture, and got another ‘I agree’ from the lecturer, and was shortly afterwards surrounded by students as the questioning ended and the lecture started to disperse, and had a fun chat with some of them. It was very sweet, actually, to find that an old geezer who had been a bit of a nerd for most of his life, could find lots of common ground with today’s young people.
And my point is?…
Whatever our governments are doing or saying, it is a truism that politicians are at best generalists, and not in touch with real trends and or solutions in areas in which they are supposed to be expert. (And only a truism, not the fiull truth – there are smart politicians, and politicians who aren’t in the pockets of vested interests). But it does make it uphill work talking with politicians. If it’s around getting permission for wind farms, that becomes a problem. But if it’s around putting solar on most roofs that can take it, there’s no need to have that conversation, and eventually they come round to your point of view, because it’s so obviously working, and there’s no way for them to stop you.
Except, of course, that by virtually removing feed in tariffs, they have done their utmost to stop solar dead in its tracks, and stop the next tenfold increase in the UK. Which would, incidentally, take us from 8Gw, to 80Gw, which is quite a lot more than our peak daytime electricity demand, and takes us well into the territory where nuclear is long dead (whatever the cleanup cost) and storage has become the issue, and by which time, switching the gas grid from methane to hydrogen will have become a well-discussed and understood topic, and we’ll be working towards it – hopefully. It’s the least cost solution so it should be a no brainer for people owning gas grids to switch to hydrogen.
Renewables have already demonstrably caused a lowering of grid wholesale prices, and only solar has the ability to halve its cost again, and then one more time again. Meaning a wholesale price for energy around 1p to 2p per unit? That would be cool, wouldn’t it? Whether we manage to get this to reduce prices for energy end users is up to us – communities have to own the solar generation, and distribution as well, for this to happen There’s no reason why not – or, rather, there’s every reason why not, as it will go against vested interests, and the need for corporations to continually increase profits in a growth economy.
SO. In just two diagrams and far less time than it took me to write this, and even less time than it took you to read this (if you’ve been kind enough to do so) we have a complete solution to our energy problems. Abundant, cheap, secure, 100% renewable year-round energy. There’s plenty that could be said to flesh it out, and fill in the evidence base to support the logic, as well as fill in the steps that get us from here to there. But the bottom line is it’s pretty simple, and almost absolutely unstoppable – as with Moore’s law in electronics, it did not need government legislation to get super powerful smartphones in everyone hands, and reduce the cost of storage from £600 for 40 megabytes (my first hard disk drive in or around 1992) to £199 for 8 terabytes (my latest, which would have cost £120,000,000 at 1992 prices). Similarly, government can’t stop the growth of the solar economy, because economics itself drives the change – but government could help the development of the solar hydrogen economy. Once Hinckley C is dead (or, rather, once it is recognised as dead) there’s no reason for government not to go for this. Discuss?
Tough about the wind, and cost of nuclear cleanup, but no worries about the long term renewable future. And the ‘long term’ is a lot sooner than governments imagine – see above…”
"
March 18, 2016 a 4:40 pm

Fleet of 150 Renault ZOE for smart solar charging project
March 11, 2016 | ID: 76330
Fleet of 150 Renault ZOE for smart solar charging project
Renault has signed a letter of intent with the Dutch Utrecht City Council, ElaadNL and LomboXnet on Smart Solar Charging for electric vehicles.
The signature took place during the state visit to Paris of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima of the Netherlands, under the schedule of Franco-Dutch Economic Year 2015-2016.
THE SMART SOLAR CHARGING NETWORK PROJECT

Renault, Europe’s leading electric vehicles manufacturer, and its Dutch economic partners Utrecht City Council, ElaadNL and LomboXnet signed a letter of intent in Paris on 11 March 2016 to develop a Franco-Dutch framework of smart solar charging solutions for electric vehicles.

The signature ceremony was attended by Renault’s Laurens van den Acker, SVP Corporate Design and Guillaume Berthier, EV sales Director; in presence of the king and queen of the Netherlands, the Dutch minister of trade, Lilianne Ploumen and the French Foreign Affairs Ministry’s secretary of state for European affairs, Harlem Désir.

SMART-CHARGE SYSTEMS FOR ELECTRIC TRANSPORT

According to the letter of intent, the city of Utrecht could be the testing ground for the solar smart-charge project. Renault, Europe’s leader in electric vehicles, would supply a fleet of 150 Renault ZOE models through 2017 to the city. ElaadNL would handle management of infrastructures and the smart-charge standard, and LomboXnet would take charge of installing the network of unique public charging terminals powered by a 44 kW grid connection. Grid operator Stedin would be involved to balance supply and demand of the grid.

Phase one of the project would involve setting up 1,000 smart solar-charge stations, powered by 10,000 photovoltaic panels in the Utrecht region. Infrastructure installation would run side by side with development of a car-share service of electric cars, powered by renewable energy, for Utrecht residents. The Renault ZOE R.Access connectivity and 22 kW charging make it ideal for car-share and smart charging applications.

Phase two of the project would proceed with the partners developing a vehicle-to-grid ecosystem, with the network of solar chargers capable of both charging the electric cars and of feeding energy stored in the batteries of parked cars onto the grid to meet demand peaks. This could be the starting point for a new system storing renewably sourced energy.

STEPPING UP THE ENERGY TRANSITION

Through its pioneering work on EVs and their batteries, Renault contributes to the energy transition in the automotive industry by reducing the use of fossil fuels. Renault, through smart charging experiments, increases the proportion of renewable energy EVs use. One of the goals of the Smart Solar Charging Project developed by Renault, ElaadNL, LomboXnet and the Utrecht City Council is to make a substantial contribution to reducing the carbon footprint not only of the auto industry but of all sectors consuming electricity.

ElaadNL researches and tests the possibilities for smart charging on behalf of the dutch grid operators. With innovative techniques ElaadNL can charge electric cars in a smart way, exactly at the right moment. With Smart Charging, the abundance of electricity from the sun and wind is used to charge our cars. Live off the wind and drive on the sun!

In June 2015, LomboXnet introduced in Utrecht a world-wide scoop: a charging station making Smart Solar Charging accessible worldwide. This charging station can charge and discharge (vehicle-to-grid, V2G), establishing the foundation for a new local energy system based on local energy sources and local storage. The unique charging station is developed in a consortium of GE, Stedin, Vidyn, Last Mile Solutions, Utrecht Municipality and led by LomboXnet.

By implementing the vehicle-to-grid project on a regional scale, the region of Utrecht creates – together with partners like Renault – a large living lab for innovative smart grid solutions. This show case implements not only green power, but ensures also clean air zero emissions in the city and region of Utrecht. Thus, Utrecht makes way with Healthy Urban living. Not only to continuously improve its leading position as the most competitive region of the EU (according to Eurostat) but also to inspire other metropolitan regions as well.

Renault has been making cars since 1898. Today it is an international multi-brand group, selling more than 2.8 million vehicles in 125 countries in 2015, with 36 manufacturing sites, and employing more than 117,000 people. To meet the major technological challenges of the future and continue its strategy of profitable growth, the Group is harnessing its international development and the complementary fit of its three brands, Renault, Dacia and Renault Samsung Motors, together with electric vehicles, the Alliance with Nissan, and its partnerships with AVTOVAZ and Daimler.

More information on the Franco-Dutch Economic Year 2015-2016: www.economieFRNL.com #economieFRNL

OVO Energy are a different kind of energy supplier. Six years ago OVO Energy started out as a kitchen table chat between a couple of friends who wanted to create an energy supplier that actually did what people want. A supplier which had fairer prices, more transparency over pricing and where energy comes from. A supplier with great customer service, the technology to make managing your energy easier and above all a focus on sustainability and the environment.

Today OVO have over half a million satisfied customers and are working harder than ever to make customers energy supply as easy and as inexpensive as possible.

OVO Energy strive to offer their customers two things. Firstly, an energy mix of gas and electricity from the greenest and secondly, energy from the most sustainable sources available and at the best possible price. OVO’s mix of energy comes from natural gas and renewable sources whilst avoiding energy generated from coal.
Fairer fuel
Just one of the ways in which OVO brings fairer energy prices is through its ‘Communities’ initiative. OVO communities aims to bring energy to customers from local sources whilst cutting costs (and thus prices as well as reducing carbon emissions. Consumers in these areas have access to greener, cheaper energy which is generated, bought and run by local communities. Another bonus for consumers is that it brings more secure long term energy tariffs

OVO have set up several community partnerships with local authorities such as Cheshire East Council, Peterborough City Council and Southend-on-Sea Borough Council. These community partnerships aim to tackle fuel poverty through measures (such as in Cheshire East) by operating on a not-for-profit basis.

OVO are an independent energy supplier. This means that they do not generate energy in their own power stations but buy it on the open market from a whole range of suppliers. OVO Energy buys their gas and electricity from different power generators from around the country. This allows OVO to constantly buy energy at the best possible price, passing savings on to customers, whilst ensuring that they can always buy the cleanest, greenest energy available on the market at an affordable price. This is something OVO Energy calls ‘mainstream green’.

Not generating their own fuel, but buying from the energy market allows OVO to offer some of the most competitive gas and electricity rates on the consumer market. Part of the way OVO does this is through dual fuel plans or dual fuel tariffs.
What does ‘Dual Fuel’ mean?

Dual fuel can be a cheaper way to pay for your electricity and gas. A ‘dual fuel’ tariff bundles both electricity and gas from the same supplier into a single energy contract, pricing plan and bill. Energy suppliers like dual fuel tariffs as they get more income when customers take both energy sources from them so often push consumers to take these plans. So are dual fuel tariffs just good for energy companies?

No. A lot of people find dual fuel tariffs are convenient and save time and money with only one bill to worry about paying and a single supplier to deal with if there are any problems. As energy suppliers actively want customers to take dual fuel tariffs they often offer extra discounts for customers who sign up to these plans.

This article from BBC reports on the So. Cal. methane leak, the largest in US history. It’s not just the burning of fossil fuels that is the problem. In order to burn them we have to extract, transport and store them. Each step in the process exposes the environment to leaks, spills and waste disposal problems.It’s a dirty business from beginning to end. A tax on carbon at the source, and end to government subsidies and enforcement of pollution laws would bring the cost pop fossil fuels far above that of renewables.

We sent Craig Sams the co-founder of Green and Black an article about how difficult the Government had made the development of renewable energy to continue its development right now.

He came back with the following comment:

“One thing is the EU’s 74.5% tariff on imports of solar glass from China. This props up some European manufacturers but it also makes the cost of solar installations less competitive. Fossil fuels are still heavily subsidised while subsidies for solar are slashed and solar glass is heavily taxed. The Chinese lead the world in wind and solar – they have no big oil companies and want to get rid of coal.”

This dispels the myth that renewables are costing consumers a lot on their energy bills. Compared with the support overtime for fossil fuels and nuclear its extremely modest.

Take another look at our website that aim to give you the real facts about renewables and get involved in the debate now, its our real future for energy and the Planet.

Lets Get Energized with Renewable Energy!

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